From Social Protection to Social Inclusion for Children in Poverty: Bridging the Disparities with Integrated Policy Design

Targeting social protection interventions for children in poverty is a well accepted policy paradigm. However, by virtue of their design, targeted policies focused exclusively on poor children remain largely disconnected from the domains of educational and social development of non-poor children in the society. This is because, in stratified societies of the world, rich and the poor children follow vastly divergent paths of education, socialization and social mobility. In this paper, we present research findings form an intervention that purposively links the wellbeing of the most vulnerable children with the educational and social development of more privileged children in the society. We submit that for social protection policies to become a truly transformative force for children in poverty, such policies should be purposively conceived in conjunction with the education and developmental imperatives of children from more privileged backgrounds

Setting the stage for equity-sensitive monitoring of the maternal and child health Millennium Development Goals.

OBJECTIVE: This analysis seeks to set the stage for equity-sensitive monitoring of the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). METHODS: We use data from international household-level surveys (Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS)) to demonstrate that establishing an equity baseline is necessary and feasible, even in low-income and data-poor countries. We assess data from six countries using 11 health indicators and six social stratifiers. Simple bivariate stratification is complemented by simultaneous stratification to expose the compound effect of multiple forms of vulnerability. FINDINGS: The data reveal that inequities are complex and interactive: inferences cannot be drawn about the nature or extent of inequities in health outcomes from a single stratifier or indicator. CONCLUSION: The MDGs and other development initiatives must become more comprehensive and explicit in their analysis and tracking of inequities. The design of policies to narrow health gaps must take into account country-specific inequities